


Wish Upon a Star

by trash_devil



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Genre: Angst, One-Shot, post-Alcor becoming the world, someone make this boy go to bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-14 05:39:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16034114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trash_devil/pseuds/trash_devil
Summary: There's always one star missing from his sky.





	Wish Upon a Star

It was 3 in the morning, and Hibiki Kuze was wide awake. 

He sat with his back pressed against the windowsill, his head resting against the ice-cold glass to soothe his headache, a throbbing cocktail of exhaustion and caffeine. Discarded energy drinks littered his half of the room. In the center, the abrupt cut off of the shining cans delineated where his territory ended and Daichi’s began. Daichi’s space was no cleaner, but it held a different type of detritus: chip bags and magazines and used concert tickets.

Hibiki sketched out a map of the skies in a battered notebook. He had no need to look down to the paper as his hand moved to dot the stars and line the constellations. His fingers knew exactly how to maneuver the pencil to draw a perfect copy of what his eyes saw in the gradually paling night. 

The pencil trailed off as he reached the Big Dipper. The silence without the scratch of the pencil felt deafening. Very slowly, his gaze lingering for many long seconds on each star, he began to trace it out. The bowl curved and angled under his careful hand, the handle stretched up, and before he could stop himself, his hand drifted a bit to the side.

But his eyes didn’t see the star.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise; it had been missing for nearly a year. Still, the shock never seemed to dull. The pencil slipped from his grip and fell to the floor, lost in the dull-aluminum-can gleam. He squinted, trying to see something, anything, within that empty space beside Mizar. His eyes watered from what he told himself was strain and would never admit the truth of, the stars doubling into ghostly images of themselves. 

It had to be there. He had to be there. It was just that particular night, his eyes or the fog or the strange whims of the sky, nevermind that this happened every night. Hibiki glanced down at his sketch.

It was speckled with dots he had not drawn. He pressed his finger to one. Wet.

He wiped the tears from his cheeks and released a long, shaky breath. With a strange sort of tenderness, he tore the page from his binding and folded it until its edges and corners were shaped into a paper airplane. The window creaked its complaints as he wrenched it open to toss it out into the night. 

It wobbled in the air, before taking an abrupt dive to slam against Daichi’s car window. He doubted his friend would notice the crumpled scrap in the morning.

Hibiki closed his eyes and wondered, as he had done every night, why he had declared himself an astronomy major. He couldn’t decide if he was a masochist or a romantic, or just a heartbroken loser longing for a mysterious man who no longer existed. Or maybe he existed everywhere. Hibiki had never managed to figure that part out either.

“Stupid Saiduq,” he muttered to the sky. “Had to be the world instead of being in it. I’m gonna have some words for you when I see you again.”

When, not if. He could at least cling to that belief.

He took a quick look at the clock. If he went to bed now, he might get an hour or two of badly needed sleep. Daichi was always scolding him for the bags under his eyes, but Hibiki couldn’t care less. College students were naturally exhausted, and only Daichi knew the true depth of his obsession. And getting a lecture from him was laughable experience. Hibiki almost smiled thinking of those stuttering, clumsy reprimands. It was more cute than threatening. 

Instead of closing his eyes, Hibiki watched the sun climb up into the sky and banish the stars. The alarm rang. For now, he would trade in the real stars for the ones in his textbooks.


End file.
